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  1. #11
    Forum Lurker Member Sir Moody's Avatar
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    Default Re: Syria

    Quote Originally Posted by gedingradski View Post
    ..not gonna touch that one...



    While those organisations do share a number of member nations as well as some overlap in political agendas, they aren't the same thing... this is bordering on the realm of 'world-governments' and 'secret societies' which frankly I do not have much truck with...

    In response to your points:
    1. There is oil in Syria, it constitutes around a quarter of their economy (major exports go to your good friend Germany, as a matter of fact); though globally they are small producers.
    2. I highly doubt Muamar knew anything that "they" wanted to put a stop to. My recollection of events was that the civil war began before "they" got involved, plus "they" only provided weapons and a no-fly zone (maybe some secret operations, but I doubt it). So trying to paint the Libyan civil war as some elaborate exercise to remove Gaddafi, I think is a little insensitive to the people that suffered under his regime for 30-odd years as well as the tens of thousands of people that died during the conflict.

    But why was there intervention in Libya and not Syria (thus far)? Lets consider a few key differences:
    1. Syria has much closer ties with Russia, China and Iran (the first two have a lot of politcal sway and the last is too unpredictable to account for militarily and politically),
    2. The region is very 'hot' at the moment with even more militant groups and their funding organisations active and more mobile than they have been in the past,
    3. Geographic proximity to Russia and Iran may also be a consideration, at least Libya was more 'containable' (though that certainly didn't turn out to be the case...),
    4. USA, UK, France (and others) all had long standing grievances with Gaddafi, much less so with Assad,
    5. The rebel groups in Libya were more organised and forthcoming with external powers from the beginning.

    The biggest reason (in my opinion) is because the Assad regime is not sufficiently isolated. There is a potential trigger for other powers to become involved in favour of Assad against other external powers backing the rebels, which is obviously a very bad outcome. On top of that, there are plenty of indications that this could turn into another Iraq (but worse) and no one, anywhere can afford it, Syrians the least.
    all good reasons however there is another reason we haven't got involved - the Syrian Army isn't antiquated

    Libya had horrifically out of date air defenses and thus we had pretty much air dominance once the pathetically small air force was crushed

    Syria has a large and modern Air force as well as an almost up to date Air defense (courtesy of the Russians) - intervention would be costly and right now with all the points you mentioned and the fact we aren't even sure we want the rebels to win mean we wont do anything - for now

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